Please Come to Denver

Colorado's capital and countryside will be on display for the annual preservation conference.

By Rachel Adams

The Mile-High City (Denver Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau)

When the National Preservation Conference first came to Denver in 1969, the city had just entered into large-scale redevelopment. Many of its old residential and commercial buildings, some dating to the mid-19th century, were making way for office towers and other new construction. Soon the city's ailing old downtown became a rallying point for alarmed residents, who banded together to rescue its rich history. This year, as it hosts the 57th national conference from Sept. 30 to Oct. 5, Denver will show Trust members and friends how successful that preservation movement became. With the theme "New Frontiers in Preservation," the meeting will showcase the city's continuing downtown and neighborhood revitalization and methods used throughout the Denver area to regulate sprawl, bolster rural communities, preserve natural landscapes, and promote heritage tourism.

In conjunction with the Colorado Historical Society, and supported by local partners Colorado Preservation, Inc., and Historic Denver, Inc., the Trust has organized more than 50 educational and 30 field sessions. One of the latter will visit an area saved from urban renewal?Lower Downtown, or LoDo. Built during the railroad boom of the 1870s, LoDo's many warehouses had slipped into disrepair by the mid-20th century. In the 1960s, the city began to restore the 29-block section as a residential zone, and the neighborhood found itself on the rebound. Now, LoDo's industrial structures?coupled with well-integrated construction from the 1980s and ?90s?house a successful mix of loft apartments, shops, and restaurants.

The downtown area south of LoDo is also flourishing, revitalized since thee early 1990s through a joint undertaking by the city, preservation groups, and the Trust. The Downtown Denver Historic District designated there in 2000 is now home to 43 protected buildings. Made up of individual structures instead of being bounded by set perimeters, the district was the first of its kind in the country. "Denver is a city of preservation firsts," adds Barbara Pahl, director of the Trust's mountains/plains office. "This was the debut of what we call a 'chocolate-chip cookie' district?made of scattered buildings?just as LoDo was one of the earliest urban-loft sites."

The conference will visit extraordinary landmarks. At the Vance Kirkland Museum, for example, a 1910 arts-and-crafts-style studio, participants can admire the works of one of Colorado's most distinguished painters, who used the property as his work-space from 1932 to 1981. A block away, the Molly Brown House Museum honors a Denverite of quite different caliber. The 1886 home and onetime residence of the "unsinkable" Titanic survivor and social activist, managed by Historic Denver, Inc., has been scrupulously restored.

"New Frontiers in Preservation" also offers regional excursions. Conferees may ride Denver's popular light-rail transit system from LoDo's Union Station?an 1870s-era building in the midst of major renovation?to the historic farming town of Littleton, 10 miles to the south. Or they may travel 70 miles northwest to Rocky Mountain National Park, where in 2000 the Trust helped save from demolition the McGraw Ranch, an 1884 dude ranch now used as a research and educational center. Several post-World War II landmarks?such as the U.S. Air Force Academy Chapel, a multi-spired modernist structure on the school's campus near Colorado Springs?will also serve as field-session destinations, as visitors examine the particular challenges involved in saving modern architecture.

Other excursions will focus on the region's potential for heritage tourism?including trips to Victor and Cripple Creek, mining boomtowns built during the 1890s gold rush. In Colorado Springs, founded in 1871 by railroad tycoon William Jackson Palmer, visitors will tour the city's historic areas and see how tourism there benefits local businesses.

Red Rocks Amphitheater (Photo by Ron Ruhoff. Denver Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau. )

Red Rocks Amphitheater in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains will enfold the closing session. Carved into the deep-red sandstone of a natural gorge some 60 million years old, the 1941 amphitheater is one of Colorado's most striking works of landscape architecture. The surrounding Red Rocks park was used for centuries by the Ute and Arapaho tribes for ceremonial purposes; conference meetings will cover the preservation of this and other Native American sites in the region. The Trust's Legal Defense Fund, which has intensified its concentration on sacred-sites protection, will host several such meetings.

For more than 30 years, Denver has worked hard to rescue and refurbish the historic assets that embody its periods of growth and that survived its times of decline. Denver's diversity?and the varied approaches to preservation that have come with it?make the city a rewarding conference choice. Says Pahl: "The city has always shown that pioneering spirit."

For more information, visit www.nthpconference.org.

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